In 2024 Russia election, Putin may cement longest reign since Stalin
Putin says Russia is ‘ready’ for nuclear war
A video of Russian President Vladimir Putin was released of him saying Russia is ready for nuclear war after the U.S. announced more aid for Ukraine.
Sasha Skochilenko’s crime was swapping supermarket price tags with anti-war messages. Oleg Tarasov was locked up because of the name he gave his Wi-Fi network. Aleksey Moskalyov was convicted of discrediting the Russian military for a drawing his 13-year-old daughter made at school.
Vladimir Putin, 71, Russia’s longest serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, will almost certainly emerge victorious in the nation’s eighth presidential election. The vote takes place Friday to Sunday, and the winner will be inaugurated in a lavish ceremony in May at the Grand Kremlin Palace, former residence of tsars and empresses.
If, as widely expected, Putin cruises to another six-year term − the former KGB officer has held continuous positions as Russia’s president or prime minister since 1999 − opponents say it will be because he has used all facets of the state to weaken every threat to his authority, because he has spent a fortune implementing rigid control over Russia’s political system, and, well, because the vote is rigged.
“This is not an election, it’s a selection,” said Alena Popova, a Moscow-based human rights activist.
Popova failed to win a seat in parliamentary elections in 2021. She ran on a platform that put women’s rights and highlighting domestic violence at the center of her political campaign. Authorities said her feminist views were “extremist” and could lead to the “destruction of traditional values.” She was designated a “foreign agent,” a quasi-legal classification that is tantamount to being called a spy or traitor.
Popova compared Russia’s presidential vote to Stalin’s “fictive electoral process,” when it was obvious to many that it wasn’t Russia’s voters who decided anything but Russia’s vote counters who decided everything.
“Putin has criminalized the expression of any alternative opinions,” she said.
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Skochilenko, 33, an artist from St. Petersburg, was jailed for seven years for replacing small supermarket labels with messages that read, “The Russian army bombed an art school in Mariupol (in Ukraine’s South East)” or “My great grandfather did not fight in World War II for four years so that Russia could become a fascist state.”
College student Tarasov, 22, was given a 10-day prison sentence for labeling his Wi-Fi network with the pro-Kyiv slogan “Slava Ukraini! (“Glory to Ukraine),” according to court records.
Moskalyova’s school south of Moscow called the police after she drew a picture depicting missiles flying over a Russian flag toward a woman and child. A police investigation revealed that her father had criticized the Kremlin in social media posts. He was jailed for two years.
His daughter was sent to an orphanage.
“While the war is going on and the current president is in power, we can hardly do anything to hasten her release from prison,” Sonya Subobina said of her girlfriend Skochilenko.
“But I emotionally support her and tell her that we will get through everything together.”
Why is Putin bothering to hold a vote at all?
As part of Putin’s clampdown on dissent, authorities in Russia have in recent years adopted a slew of laws restricting human rights, including freedom of speech and assembly, as well as the rights of minorities and religious groups. Putin has made it illegal to call Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a war.
Putin changed Russia’s constitution in 2021 to allow him to rule until at least 2036 if he wants to. In another sign of the president’s tight grip, he has allowed only a few handpicked candidates who cooperate with the regime to run against him in this year’s vote.
Leonid Slutsky is an extreme nationalist from the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Nikolai Kharitonov will represent the Communist Party. Vladislav Davankov, a national centrist, will take part for the New People Party.
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None are against the war in Ukraine. Like Putin, all three are on Western sanction lists. None have committed to bringing independent observers to voting stations. All three support anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, including the decriminalization of domestic violence and bills outlawing gender-affirming procedures.
The death last month of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, whose family and supporters believe he was murdered in prison, and the many Putin opponents like him who over the years have died or been seriously injured in mysterious circumstances, shows that Putin may also not be above state-sponsored assassinations.
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The Kremlin denies any part in these violent episodes.
Still: If Putin can effectively do what he wants in Russia, why is he even bothering to hold a vote?
Sam Greene, a…
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